Iran Will Allow IAEA Inspectors at Secret Site

Iran will grant United Nations inspectors access to a secret military site, The New York Times reports.

Tehran’s representative to the U.N. nuclear-oversight agency, The Times reports, will allow inspectors to visit the Parchin military complex. The representative said that this was an action of good will. Iran has previously denied the International Atomic Energy Agency such access to the Parchin facility.

As tensions between Iran and Israel continue to rise, Iran is trying to prove that its nuclear enrichment is strictly for peaceful purposes. Israel maintains that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, and the Israelis have threatened to strike those facilities.

Yesterday, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met to reinforce the two nations' commitment to stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation. Still, the two men do not see eye to eye on the exact way to deal with the rogue country. Obama has called for more economic and diplomatic sanctions instead of military action, but he made it clear he would consider the latter as a last resort.

“We waited for diplomacy to work; we’ve waited for sanctions to work; none of us can afford to wait much longer,” Netanyahu said yesterday.

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Meanwhile, several Republican politicians have suggested that Israel should attack Iranian nuclear facilities if Jerusalem feels that it’s necessary.

Calling Obama “America’s most feckless president since Carter,” Mitt Romney said in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post he would curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions through both tighter sanctions and a possible military option.

The former Massachusetts governor writes that it will be a “military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions”—namely moving forward with ballistic missile-defense systems, restoring the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously. He also said that he would increase military assistance to Israel.

Democratic National Committee Chairwomen Debbie Wasserman Shultz responded to Romney’s op-ed, telling CNN’s This Morning that Romney’s language is merely saber-rattling. She said the president and Netanyahu “are on the same page.”

“The difference between President Obama’s policy and Mitt Romney—and what he said in his editorial this morning—is exactly none, except for the bellicose language and telegraphing that Mitt Romney is doing,” she said.